I blame shorting for the state of this stock and the general state of the PM stocks for they are in the same boat as the financial stocks mentioned in citytocityca's Depression post.

Those very financial institutions desperate for income to cover their losses are setting aside any honour and civility that they may have had and are grasping at anything to survive, so just about any means are fair game and we are their victims.

Going back further it is the issuance of easy money to those institutions that got them into trouble. Further still, the easy money had to be issued to cover the expense of heavy dept and outflow of cash to foreign nations which largely occured through outsourcing of jobs and gluttinous dependence on resources.

Now the rise in oil prices has fueled an inflation on all products, and to some degree even services, that has not been seen for decades.
Hence the US has been in a recession ( though initially denied, now mum about) since the begining of the year and is in danger of going into a depression. The worst part of that is that it has successfully exported its predicament onto the rest of the world.
So I do not see a quick solution but more of the same.
All of us here who hold gold and silver in any form (stocks included ) are not going to be rich, we will be only relatively richer, and on paper, because that wealth will be represented by highly devalued dollars. (Just compare the Euro to the US dollar when the Euro just came out - their roles have reversed since then. )